Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 138
Goodmorning everyone! Another edition of my newsletter on everything I find interesting. Mostly on Global Marketing & Retail. Go check out this edition.
Hello, sorry for last weeks interruption, I didn’t have time to send my newsletter. I was really busy. Lot’s of things going on in my life, have to make some decisions, difficult.
But this week, I thought it’s important again to send out the newsletter again, as I really like create and send the newsletter. So I collected again news that I found interesting and that’s useful for others to read including some pictures from a small network event where I took part of.
So start reading. I am sure some of the news in this newsletter you can probably use in your daily job or at your agency serving customers.
😅Time for a laugh: No need to pay for a Claude subscribtion, McDonalds got you covered😅
🇸🇪 Meanwhile in Sweden: an AI manager runs a coffeeshop
Interesting to see what goes wrong, what goes right. Would you like to have an AI boss?
🔍And now a SEO Break⬇️
First of all the pictures that went viral among the SEO community from Google Search Central Lie in Toronto. I think the slides speak for themselves.
A few other notes on it:
Crawl vs. Index: “Crawled – Currently not indexed” is rarely a technical rendering issue; it’s usually a quality signal. Google may have tried the content and decided it “wasn’t good,” or it’s a canonical/duplicate issue.
Gemini in AIO / AI Mode vs. Gemini in App. They both use the same model, but Google Search “shapes” Gemini differently in search than the standalone app. Results from AIO and AI Mode are expected to be different *There is no benefit in converting your site to Markdown for LLM or SEO purposes. *There is no benefit to creating a llms.txt file for SEO.
Details and many more very nice slides👍👍👍 via:
https://www.jcchouinard.com/google-search-central-live-toronto-slides-april-2026/
And this is also one worth to share from Aleyda :
More and more evidence also comes out that AI generated scaled content goes up and then very fast down again, fully in line with the slides from Google’s Toronto event.
🎥Mr Beast copy from the best
Learn from the best, copy from the best, and model just like Tony Robbins teaches. For YouTube, that person or model is MrBeast.
Checkout this motivational video. Most important takout: on the algorithm: it doesn’t exist. Replace “algorithm” with “audience” every time. The algorithm didn’t like your video. No. The audience didn’t. YouTube is a mirror. If people click and watch, it gets promoted. The growth hack industry sells you a god that isn’t there.
Before you hit record, run a checklist:
What’s the thumbnail?
What’s the title?
What’s the first 5 seconds?
What’s the first 30 seconds?
If you can’t answer all four clearly, don’t film.
On thumbnails: make them simple enough that a scrolling viewer instantly understands and feels emotion. MrBeast’s test: if you can still wonder about the story hours later, the thumbnail/title combo is strong.
On autoplay: many people never see the thumbnail; the video just starts. You must visually and emotionally grab them in the first 5 seconds.
On matching expectations: your title and thumbnail set the promise; the first 10 seconds must honor it. If the title says “Tether is a scam,” start with “Tether is a scam and I’m going to show you why.” Match, then exceed. The first 10 seconds are critically undervalued.
On retention: remove every dull moment. Show your video to 10 critical people and let them roast it. Even 10 seconds of talking head with no cut loses people; adding B‑cam or a new angle at 3 seconds keeps it interesting.
On the real metric: the most important metric is the next video. You don’t want “that was good, but enough for today”; you want “holy crap, what’s next?” so viewers binge 10 videos in a row.
Checkout an earlier post on Mr Beast, I wrote about Mr Beast in edition 18:
🔎Got a demo of Algolia’s agentic search & discovery layer
I recently joined a company tour through my network group, and Algolia gave a great demo of their B2B search and discovery engine. I recorded it during dinner (not the best angle from the back, but still very watchable).
What stood out: their Agent Studio powering AI agents that make on site search and discovery truly fun. These agents help users with complex queries by reasoning through intent, dynamically updating results in real-time, suggesting smart sidebar comparisons and filters, and even delivering expert-level insights directly on product detail pages (PDPs).
It’s a clear preview of where agentic on site search is heading. Sound on (English speaker).
If you’re working on digital product experiences, definitely worth a watch!
More on Algolia here: https://www.algolia.com
👩💻Vercel introduction slides
Same event, different slides, this time on Vercel, the AI coding platform. I knew them already but for many attendants is was new. They gave an introductionary presentation. (Thanks Nicky!)
Next weeks in the follow up, we get an “agentic course” from Vercel. Looking forward. I share the slides, might be useful for some.
My highlight the slides:
Where you see different use cases in busineses for -in this example- Black friday. You see the way we work now will be transformed, with tools like Vercel it’s much easier for marketing teams to create pages for promotions.
For Sales to get tailored insights and actions
And for IT to pro-actively respond.Vercel’s internal support system already succesfully resolves 87.6% of incoming requests. Now they didn’t dive into it but my guess is it works much much better then the -so far in many organisations still used- “ticket” system.
Know user intent: Great AI agents don’t just answer questions they understand who the user is (name, preferences, loyalty, saved addresses), what page/context they’re on, and their full history (abandoned carts, repeat visits, past purchases) to close the loop intelligently.
“Act on user intent: The best AI assistants don’t stop at understanding they do whatever the platform allows: search, recommend, add to cart, or complete checkout. They combine context awareness with real action capabilities.”
🇦🇪 UAE governments go full AI
So what’s happening on the digital side in the UAE. Well something really interesting. UAE already a leader or close to a leader at many digital topics, now embraces AI at government level.
Announcing what he described as a new government system, Sheikh Mohammed said the plan aims to make the UAE the first country globally to adopt “agentic AI” models capable of independently executing tasks, managing processes and supporting decision-making.
I’m very curious how this will play out especially from my perspective here in the Netherlands. Many Dutch people (including me) complain that the “human touch” in government services is lost. Civil servants seem locked into rigid processes. (I can confirm that personally also for Netherlands).
UAE claims that AI might help to get or keep (I don’t know the situation in UAE), the personal touch so it’s AI and humans.
Every federal employee will receive specialized AI training. The whole transformation is being overseen at the highest levels, with a clear message: AI isn’t replacing people it’s amplifying them to create a faster, more responsive government. People still come first.
I think we can learn from this. Very interesting to follow.
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